House OKs $3.2 Billion for Military Peacekeeping Role

WASHINGTON — The House approved an emergency bill Wednesday providing $3.2 billion to cover the cost of U.S. peacekeeping operations and decided to compensate for the expense by cutting domestic programs ranging from school construction to coal technology subsidies.

Some 35 Democrats joined Republicans in voting, 260 to 167, to defeat a Democratic-sponsored substitute that would have held the increase in defense spending to $2.6 billion and would have taken the money from other Pentagon programs.

Republicans pushed the measure through quickly after members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that, unless Congress provided the money by the end of March, the services would have to slash training, maintenance and procurement--seriously crimping military readiness.

The vote on final passage of the legislation was 262 to 165.

The Clinton Administration had asked for only $2.6 billion, to be offset by $703 million in spending cuts still to be decided. Republicans added another $600 million in spending to help finance pay hikes and other expenses that they contend are not adequately funded.

The vote marked the second time in a week that the House GOP majority has overridden the Administration on military issues. Republicans contend that Clinton’s heavy involvement in peacekeeping ventures has seriously hurt readiness. The Pentagon disagrees.

Last Thursday, the House passed broad legislation designed to restrict the President’s power to send U.S. forces on United Nations peacekeeping missions and to force the Administration to deduct the cost of such ventures from Washington’s financial contribution to the U.N. peacekeeping budget.

Pentagon estimates show that U.S. participation in peacekeeping operations will have cost the Pentagon about $2.6 billion by the time fiscal 1995 ends Sept. 30.

Since these operations were unexpected, the services paid for them by siphoning money from their operations and maintenance accounts, cutting back training and maintenance in the process. Readiness fell marginally early last autumn.

Republicans also used the legislation in an attempt to revamp the Administration’s military policies by cutting out some Pentagon programs that the White House wants to save.

The measure passed Wednesday, for example, would gut the Technology Reinvestment Program that the Administration has used to help finance development of “dual-use” technology it says would help defense contractors survive after the post-Cold War military drawdown.

It also would slash $190 million in U.S. aid to Moscow--$110 million to help build new housing for Russian military officers who have left the service and $80 million more to help Russia destroy nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

And it would cut about $150 million now earmarked for environmental cleanup around unneeded military bases. Defense Secretary William J. Perry has vowed to fight vigorously to keep all three appropriations intact.

The legislation also would rescind about $1.4 billion in spending authority for domestic programs, including $200 million for a Labor Department youth training program, $100 million in school construction money and $400 million for space program construction.

The remainder of spending in the bill would be financed by an estimated $360 million that the United States expects to receive in reimbursements from the United Nations and other nations involved in peacekeeping operations.